No one is immune from either taking the wrong action or not taking action at all, but the sense that something is completely out of a person's control is stronger in China.

Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.

Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.

To write about a struggle amidst the struggling: one must hope that the muddling will end someday.

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.

A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.

She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.

Only the smaller fish pay for the goverment's face-lift. The big ones - they just become bigger and fatter.

What is revolution except a systematic way for one species to eat another alive?

I would never describe a cloud as 'fluffy'—in Chinese or in English.

The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance; death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

The sight or sound of perfect things causes a certain suffering.

It's all been satirized for your protection.

You can count on time for two things. One is that it will pass. The other is that it will never shut up.

Joy is the clearest indicator of deep wellness.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

I'm interested in spirituality and in religion and our relationship to the divine.

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.

This is 2003, 2004. And then I started - after the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. And it was like, what is going on here?

I really want to be associated with great projects and character driven projects and films. I have to feed my soul, and keep feeling like an artist and keep being challenged.